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The town of Vitoria had 300 Jews in 1290 and 900 on the eve of the expulsion -the equivalent of 6 or 7% of the total population. Their main activities were tax collecting and medicine. In 1492 they took refuge in Bayonne across the French border, where, even today, the Jews think of themselves as the descendants of those in Vitoria. The most surprising vestige of the Jewish presence is the ...
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Probably the most interesting judería in Galicia, Ribadavia has kept its old Jewish quarter despite later urban developments. Although it is known Jews were her as far back as the tenth century, few documents about the life of their community remain. The old synagogue is the building with crests on its facade in the , which runs between the Plaza Mayor and Plaza de la Madalena. In September ...
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The historical province of Navarre, straddling the Spanish-French border, was violently disputed by the Castilians and counts of Champagne. It was also where Jews from Arab Spain came together with those of Castile and France to take advantage of the famous pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and thus contribute to its commercial prosperity. The important center of Nájera gave its name ...
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The earliest mention of Jewish shopkeepers in Aguilar de Campó, situated along the trading route toward the port of Cantabria, is from 1188. A Hebrew inscription can still be seen under the town’s coat of arms on the . It tells that on 1 June 1380 work on building the door began, paid for by Don Caq (Isaac) ben Malak and his wife Bellida. The text is in Hebrew and Castilian, with Hebrew ...
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A small jewish community lived in Puente Castro until the twelfth century. It disappeared during the wars between Castile and León. The cemetery has yielded more than a dozen magnificent tombstones. Three of them have been on permanent loan at Toledo’s Sephardic Museum since 1969, and a fourth can be seen at the diocesan museum in León. A fifth one, at the Archaeological Museum of León ...
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The village of Amusco is known to have had a community of some 300 Jews in the fifteenth century. The old synagogue is still here, surprisingly positioned on the village square next to the church and village hall; it is now the Synagogue Café (Café de la Sinagoga). The medieval synagogue was at basement level. Its powerful vaults are supported by six arches. Its design is not surprising since ...
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Segovia was home to one of the biggest communities in the Kingdom of Castile. It produced important figures like Abraham Senior and his son-in-law Meyer Melamed, who served the Catholic monarchs up to 1492. Segovia also saw a violent anti-Jewish movement under the influence of the Santa Cruz convent and subsequently as a result of the “Holy Innocent Child” affair at La Guardia. It ...
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The “Sephardic Jerusalem” is known around the world for the beauty of its synagogues and its Jewish quarter. The memory of the community has remained vivid in Toledo; historians have from the thirteenth and fourteenth century onward been able to supply fairly precise information about the location and history of the city’s Jewish community. Toledo is a city of great ...
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In the film A Monkey in Winter, Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo debate whether the Prado is a museum surrounded by a garden or a garden on which a museum is placed. What is certain is that the place and the city that hosts it inspire Belmondo throughout the film. And has inspired generations of conquerors, artists and authors for millennia, as evidenced by the great cultural and ...
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The presence of Jews in Castile and León is attested as far back as the tenth century. Over the centuries that followed the rulers granted the Jews the same rights and duties as of the Christians. The rulers considered the Jews their personal property and, throughout the period of reconquest, the community helped with the administrative and commercial organization of the conquered ...
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It was the clock-making industry that attracted Alsatian Jews to the Jura beginning in 1835. Among the great names in this industry was Achille Picard. From 1858 onwards, devout Jews met in a prayer room. They opened their in 1884. Its most recent interior renovation, in 1995, stressed the contrast between sober walls and the twelve multicolored stained-glass windows featuring biblical ...
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The Jewish presence in Bern probably dates from the 6th century. Jews are mentioned in the legal texts. During the Middle Ages, as in many other cities in the region, the situation of the Jews varied between reception, persecution (which began in Bern in 1294) and expulsion, depending on the power in place. In the wave of great expulsions that took place between the end of the 14th and the ...
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The Jewish presence in Zurich probably dates back to the 13th century. During the Middle Ages, as in many other cities in the region, the situation of the Jews varied between reception, persecution and expulsion, depending on the power in place. In the wave of major expulsions that took place between the end of the 14th and the end of the 15th century, the Jews of Zurich were expelled in ...
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The Jewish presence in Basel probably dates from 1213. During the Middle Ages, as in many other cities in the region, the situation of the Jews varied between acceptance, persecution and expulsion, depending on the power in place. In the wave of major expulsions that took place between the end of the 14th and the end of the 15th century, the Basel Jews were expelled in 1397. “In Basel, ...
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Until the end of the eighteenth century, the two villages of Endingen and Lengnau were the only ones that authorized the permanent establishment of Jews. Beginning in 1622, they resided here under the rubric of “protected foreigners”, and their communities were able to practice religion and conduct internal administrative affairs in total independence. A document from this year ...
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German-speaking Switzerland covers two-thirds of the country and accounts for 70% of its population. With cities as varied as its economic centre Zurich, the capital Berne, the watchmaking city of Biel, the ancient university and contemporary cultural life of Basel, Lucerne and its festivities, St Gallen and its abbey library. Not forgetting, of course, its mountains and lakes, which are a ...
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Founded in 1833, the Jewish community of La Chaux-de-Fonds met in a flat on rue Jaquet-Droz. Then, in 1853, a private house was used as a synagogue. From 1872, a was used in the commune of Les Eplatures. La Chaux-de-Fonds’s Jewish community opened its first synagogue in 1896. Architect Kuder was inspired by the synagogue in Strasbourg, which was later destroyed by the Nazis. In ...
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The Jewish presence in Lausanne is attested continuously from 1848 onwards when several families met in a rented room. In 1895, the community had 41 members. In 1909, there were 110 members. It should be noted that the vast majority of Jews did not participate in community life. In 1909 there were 989 people of the Jewish faith in Lausanne. Kosher meat was imported from Evian because of the ...
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Before Jews were able to settle in Geneva, the neighboring city of Carouge (at the time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia) opened its doors to them around 1779. The sole remaining Jewish vestige is the old cemetery, which was restored in 1996. A great spirit of religious tolerance allowed this arrival at the time, while in Geneva the Jews had been expelled since 1490. The acceptance of ...
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Switzerland’s French-speaking population is located in the west, in a region that covers almost a quarter of the country’s surface area. With its charming little towns along the lakes and mountains, home to skiers and festival-goers like the famous Montreux event. The sculptures of Fribourg on its churches, squares linking the streets or bridges linking the mountains. And of ...
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The city of banking and watchmaking… but not only. Geneva is a much more complex city, home to a great university and eminent thinkers for centuries, and it even published one of the first two comic strips in history. It seems that the Jewish presence in Geneva dates from the 13th century, mainly around the in the old town. The Jews were expelled from the city in 1490 and forbidden to ...
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The history of the Jews in Speyer reaches back over 1,000 years. In the Middle Ages, the city of Speyer (formerly Spira), Germany, was home to one of the most significant Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire. Its significance is attested to by the frequency of the Ashkenazi Jewish surname Shapiro/Shapira and its variants Szpira/Spiro/Speyer. The community was totally wiped out in 1940 ...
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In Worms, directly administrated by Emperor Henry IV, the Jewish community obtained the right to trade by public edict of the emperor as early as 1074. The synagogue of Worms was founded in 1034. Not only the location of worship but also a center for study, the synagogue made Worms the spiritual and cultural center of Judaism during the Middle Ages. Famous rabbis A native of Troyes, the ...
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At the height of the Middle Ages, the Jewish community in Mainz rivaled the communities of Worms and Speyer. Few traces of this community remain. Among several stone tombs preserved in the Jewish cemetery is that of Rabbi Gershom ben Yehuda (c. 960-1028), called Meor ha-Golah (Light of the Exile). A A has replaced the old one. It was built in 2010 and is part of the Jewish Community center ...
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The independent city of Frankfurt has welcomed Jews since 1150. However, from 1460 until their emancipation at the end of the seventeenth century, the Jews were confined to Judengasse (alley of the Jews), a ghetto that became quickly overcrowded. In 1720, moneylender Meyer Amschel Rothschild, his wife, Gütele, and their eighteen children moved into one of the houses in the area. Meyer’s ...
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The small city of Friedberg possesses the deepest mikvah in Germany: seventy-two steps carved into the basalt lead the visitor to a natural spring situated eighty-two feet below the surface. At the bottom of the staircase, a stone tablet dedicated to the builder of this bath displays the date of its origin in 1260. An octogonal opening in the dome above is the sole source of light and gives ...
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The oldest vestiges of a Jewish presence in Germany are found in the Rhineland. For a long time the river constituted the western border of the Roman Empire. In the fortified cities of the frontier such as Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), the Diaspora Jews found favorable conditions in which to exercice their industrial and commercial talents. Development of Rhenish judaism Later, in the Middle ...
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Once again the capital of a unified Germany, Berlin today has the largest Jewish community in the country (11000 people). This is nonetheless far fewer than the some 170000 Jews who lived here just before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. One can well imagine that the ghosts of history will wander in Berlin for a long time to come, a city that, like Vienna, was a major economic, ...
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The synagogue of the handsome coastal town of Ostend becomes busy in the summer. It was built partly with the help of rich financiers. At one time as many as 300 families came to pray here. Among the famous Jewish figures who stayed in Ostend were Marc Chagall and Albert Einstein. Ostend is a seaside town that has been very popular with British holidaymakers for centuries, as James Joyce, for ...
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Ghent is a city known, like Liège, for its student life, but also as an important cultural centre, its port and its ancient textile activity. The Jewish presence in Ghent seems to date back to the 8th century according to some sources. The Jews were expelled from the city in 1125, but were allowed to settle again in the following century. In the following century they were allowed to settle ...
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